


Birthdays

by confab_nocturni



Series: Warm ups [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen, fic sketch, warm up writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:11:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9697121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confab_nocturni/pseuds/confab_nocturni
Summary: Kara has three birthdays





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series of warm up writing exercises. The results are sort of head-cannon, sort of fic. They're rough, draft 1.5. Think warm-up sketch for illustrators. Anything in this series will likely have been posted to [my tumblr](http://confabnocturni.tumblr.com/) first.

The first is her threvzeht, her naming day on Krypton; the day she was formally welcomed into the House of El. According to Kryptonian tradition the month of a person’s name day imparts certain qualities.  Kara’s name day was on the second day of the seventh week in the third month of six.  The month ruled by Lorra goddess of beauty and patron of the Artists Guild.  Those named when Rao is in her house are passionate, devoted to family and possessing excess of social grace (Kara thinks two out of three isn’t too bad, but would have liked at least a little bit of social grace.) And, while the naming day itself if one of the four milestones in a Kryptonian’s life, the anniversary of a person’s name day is marked, but not really celebrated the same as on Earth.  Small gifts are given usually related to their House.  Kara’s favorite were always the small sweets in the shape of the crest of El that Aunt Astra would sneak her when Alura wasn’t looking.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

On Earth, Kara learned what human birthdays are when the Danvers started to prepare her to go to school.  They needed to fill in a birthday on the paper work so the school could determine what grade she should be in.  Jeremiah thought it would be nice if they could figure out what Earth day corresponded with Kara’s Kryptonian name day. He read somewhere that consistency is good for kids when dealing with big changes. Things got complicated pretty quickly, though.  To start, an Earth year is about sixty Earth days shorter than a Kryptonian year, but it has twice as many months. After some trial and error Jeremiah figures that they can ignore months and weeks they just need to know how many Kryptonian days old Kara is, convert that to Earth days and then subtract from the current date.  They’re about to get an answer when Alex strolls into the dining room (the table is covered with paper and a star chart and a few false starts) and asks “What about the time Kara was in the Phantom Zone?” And Eliza calls in from the kitchen “Oh, what about time dilation? The pod had to be going faster than the speed of light or was there a wormwhole?  Do wormholes effect time calculations?”  Jeremiah starts to look a little lost but is determined to get this right.  He reaches for a new piece of paper while muttering, “This is why I went into astrobiology instead of physics.”    
This is when it hits Kara that her planet is really gone.  Well, hits her again because it keeps happening.  For every amazing new thing she learns or sees on Earth (like birds!) there is something else that reminds her she isn’t from here and can’t go back to the place she knew as home.  Suddenly, this whole project is less exciting.  

“When’s your birthday?” she whispers to Jeremiah.  

He looks up from the latest calculations, surprised at how quiet the question is. “May 16th,” he replies and puts an arm around Kara’s shoulder pulling her into a hug. 

“Ok, can that just be mine, too?” Kara asks into his chest.  Jeremiah doesn’t know how to answer.  He wants to make it easy for Kara and just say yes, but he also wants her to have a day of her own not something shared or tacked onto someone else’s day.  

Before he finds a way to say this Eliza comes into the room having finished in the kitchen.  She seems to sense what’s going on.  "What about the solstice?“ she asks. 

Jeremiah responds uncertainly, "The next one is in December. I don’t know it’s so close to Christmas don’t you think.”

“No,” says Eliza, “the summer one. In June.”  

“What do you think?,” he asks Kara.

She shrugs and agrees just wanting to not have to think about it any more. “Ok, that sounds fine.”  It isn’t until years later that she realizes that what felt random and rushed at the time was anything but. 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The third is her Earth-birthday; the day her pod landed on Earth and she met Kal-El again and the Danvers for the first time.  It’s a tradition that Alex started and something they mostly just celebrate between themselves. The first year anniversary of Kara’s landing Kara was still adjusting to, well, everything.  Her first year of school was a little more than half done.  It was getting to be more familiar, but it wasn’t easy.  Midvale doesn’t really have winter like some places, but the days were shorter and there was less sunlight overall.  Kara hadn’t figured out how to supplement her energy with food yet. So, was feeling kind of run down on a lot of levels.

Alex didn’t make a big deal out of it or anything. She just slid a Hostess cupcake across the table while they were working on homework that evening and whispered “Happy Earth Birthday.”  The cupcake looked like it had spent the whole day in Alex’s backpack and Kara is pretty sure these things come in packs of two even though there is nothing else in sight but after one bite she doesn’t care.  Eliza and Jeremiah are pretty strict about foods with “zero nutritional value” and “high glycemic index”.  So, this is the first time Kara has had anything quite like this and it is bliss, sugary, caloric bliss.  It was also the first time it occurred to her that her arrival on Earth could be anything other than a tragedy.  That it was something that could be celebrated instead of mourned. That Alex might feel this way after a year of having to constantly watch over Kara and make sure Kara didn’t say anything too weird or do anything too far outside of human ‘normal’, after a year of having her home invaded and her parents drop everything to focus on this new, unexpected person…it made Kara feel hope.  Hope that she had a place here as part of a family not just burden.  Hope that she was doing something right even if she didn’t know what it was.  Hope that there might be more of these amazing cupcakes that tasted like nothing else in the universe so far.

**Author's Note:**

> Additional notes: 
> 
> 1) Kryptonian words found in the dictionary here:<http://kryptonian.info/>  
> Length and division of kryptonian year also found on this site.  
> 2) Info on guilds and deities found here: <http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Kryptonians>  
> 3) I really need to start paying attention to tense changes, but that’s for another time.


End file.
